In Pakistan, the sun sets and rises in the west.

Political meteorologists saw a waning sunset in US-Pak relations in the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) encyclical of 2017, issued during President Trump’s first tenure. They notice a false sunrise in his latest NSS paper, issued in November 2025. 

NSS of 2017 devoted a precious paragraph to the threats emanating from an unstable Pakistan. In part, it said: ‘The United States continues to face threats from transnational terrorists and militants operating from within Pakistan [.] The prospect for an Indo-Pakistani military conflict that could lead to a nuclear exchange remains a key concern requiring consistent diplomatic attention [.] We seek a Pakistan that is not engaged in destabilizing behavior [.] We will press Pakistan to intensify its counter-terrorism efforts [and] encourage Pakistan to continue demonstrating that it is a responsible steward of its nuclear assets’.

In NSS 2025, there is no mention of Pakistan incubating terrorism nor of the Indo-Pakistan skirmish in May 2025, beyond a self-congratulatory pat on the back by Trump for settling in eight months ‘eight raging conflicts’, one of them being between Pakistan and India.

On India’s part, it has always been suspicious of suns that rise in the west. NSS 2017, for example, may have declared that the U.S. would deepen its ‘strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region [and] encourage India to increase its economic assistance in the region’.

In NSS 2025, however, that unequivocal endorsement stands diluted. It says that the U.S. would ‘continue improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States (“the Quad”)’. It foresees that ‘The Indo-Pacific (region) is already, and will continue to be, among the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds [my italics]’.  

President Trump has yet to visit Pakistan. He has however hosted its top civilian and military leadership in the White House. At the recent Gaza peace summit on 13 October in Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt), Trump unusually yielded the microphone to our PM Shehbaz Sharif. He returned the compliment by nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

If ‘America First’ is the North Star in Trump’s firmament, to Indian PM Modi Indo-Russian relations are a ‘guiding star’, as he put it during President Putin’s recent visit to New Delhi in early December. Modi’s hopes that Putin might revive the fusion of interests that birthed the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty of 1971 proved illusory. No Su-57s stealth fighter aircraft, no S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, or the later S-500 model. Both Russia and India know that Russia no longer has the military means nor the international clout to confront Trump’s America or to out-class Chinese technology.  

Trump has already made his attitude towards India and Russia clear. In July, he had tweeted: ‘I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together’. He has described India as a ‘laundromat for the Kremlin’. Trump  would dearly like India to stop or at least minimise its purchase of oil from Russia. India however remains obdurate. It is the second-largest consumer of Russian oil, after China.  

No sooner had Putin flown out of New Delhi in early December than Trump untied U.S. purse strings by approving a sweet-heart deal for Pakistan. It is worth USD $686 million of defence articles to rejuvenate Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) F-16 fleet.

To some in Pakistan, Trump’s impulsive largesse of USD $686 million for PAF’s F-16 fleet has not erased memory of the U.S. sanctions and arms embargo on Pakistan in October 1990, because of our nuclear programme. Then, 28 F-16s paid for by us were embargoed and stored on U.S. soil. At present, Pakistan has between 70 to 80 operational F-16s. This latest sale would help extend the jets’ service life through 2040.

To others in the United States, America’s military dominance is actually on the decline. A recent analysis by The New York Times’s influential Editorial Board examined the U.S. military – ‘technologically, bureaucratically, culturally, politically, and strategically.’

Why, it asks, have successive U.S. administrations invested ‘in the old way of war?’ It blames Congress, the Pentagon, military culture, and their resistance to change. It warns against Trump’s determination to squander $1 trillion in 2026. That money will do more, it believes, to magnify U.S. weaknesses than to sharpen its strength.

Interestingly, the NYT Board predicts that China will seize Taiwan by 2027. That eventuality will fall within the terms of the present U.S. and Pakistani governments. Will Pakistan again change the direction of its sunrises? 

F. S. AIJAZUDDIN  

[DAWN, 18 Dec 2025]